Chapter 9

 

  “You know, if you keep coming in so early you’re going to start making me look bad,” Green noted as he arrived at his desk.

  Briscoe replaced the receiver of his phone and suggested good-naturedly, “If you’re worried, you could try getting your butt out of bed a little earlier.” Turning more serious, he added, “I wanted to get started tracking down Fisher. Isabel still wasn’t home but she’s supposed to be at work by nine. I called the Des Moines police station where Fisher was picked up four years ago and they put me in touch with one of the detectives who worked the case. According to her, the reason we couldn’t find out any details about the arrest was because they had problems making the case against Fisher and he walked.”

  “That explains why he wasn’t in the system as a sex offender. Did she tell you anything about what happened?” 

  “She said Fisher was accused of abducting a fourteen year old girl. Evidently, the girl had run away from home and he found her wandering the streets one night. She wouldn’t tell him her last name or where she lived. According to him, he offered to let her spend the night at his apartment just so she’d have a safe place to stay. He claimed she told him she was seventeen and that he didn’t know how young she really was or he would’ve called the cops. The father of the girl was long gone and the mother was an alcoholic who didn’t even notice that her daughter was missing for a couple of days, so it didn’t get reported until the day after Fisher picked her up. But once it hit the 6:00 news, he took the girl home. The D.A. tried to press charges for kidnapping but the cops couldn’t make it stick. But get this: The girl told one of the cops that Fisher had tried to talk her into going on a picnic with him at a secluded beach area on a near-by reservoir before he returned her. She had been so shaken up by all the news reports, though, that she convinced him to just take her home.”

  Green let out a low whistle. “Why do I get the feeling that little girl’s guardian angel was working overtime?”

  “Yeah,” Briscoe agreed succinctly. “Too bad Corinna Braden wasn’t so lucky. Fisher’s graduated from going out and picking up runaways to luring girls to him using a computer. The detective said the thing she remembered most about him was how taken the girl was with him after they had spent only one day together. She couldn’t tell them enough how he had ‘come to her rescue.’ Sound familiar?”

  Green nodded. “Sounds like he had a way with girls back then, too. While we’re waiting to talk with Isabel, why don’t we do a little high-tech police work to try to find this guy?” At Briscoe’s questioning look, he reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out the residence telephone directory. Dropping it onto his desk with a thud, he said, “Our Eric Fisher may not have a New York driver’s license but I’ll bet he gets a New York City phone bill.”

 ***Briscoe stuck his head in Van Buren’s office as she finished a phone call. “Ed and I are heading out. There were six Eric Fishers in the phone book and we’ve got four to track down. The other two were the ones we eliminated at the D.M.V. yesterday. We’re also going to stop in and see Isabel when she shows up for her shift at the coffee shop.”

  “Before you do that, I want you to pay Skoda a visit and see if he can provide you with a profile,” she urged. “The more you know about the killer’s habits, the easier it’s going to be to find him and make the case against him.”

  “We need all the help we can get,” he agreed.

  “I know how hard you and Ed have been working this case and I don’t want to add to the pressure, but I sure would like to be able to tell the chief we have a suspect in our sights.”

  Briscoe nodded and promised, “You’ll be the first to know once we have something.”

***Emil Skoda leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers behind his head, puffing small breaths out from between his lips thoughtfully. “Well,” he began slowly, “if it’s the same guy, given what happened in Des Moines, I’d say he’s stepped up in confidence quite a bit. The incident with the fourteen year old showed his hesitancy since he had a whole day with her and nothing happened. The fact that the Braden girl was raped and killed only a short time after leaving her home proves that he’s much more decisive now. You said Fisher looked young for his age?”

  “Yes,” Green concurred. “After watching the tape from the security camera, I would’ve guessed him to be in his late teens, maybe early twenties. But going by his arrest record, he’s now twenty-six. In the four year old mug shot from Des Moines, he doesn’t look much older than fifteen.”

  “Most pedophiles and juvenile rapists are a little older than that, but looking younger than his age could actually be a factor in getting him started early. Kids are drawn to those closer to their own age. He may have found it so easy to come into contact with young girls that it encouraged him to act on his abnormal desires.”

  “I’m sure it would’ve helped him with Corinna Braden. If she had found someone who looked a lot older than her waiting when they met, she probably would’ve kept on walking,” Green agreed.

  “So what are we looking for?” Briscoe asked.

  “Given his appearance and penchant for young teens, don’t bother looking for him at the local playground. It would be difficult for him to blend into that environment. You’ll more likely find him in places like arcades, movie theaters, or near middle and high schools. And once he’s there he may situate himself so that when an opportunity presents itself, he can casually join in a conversation, maybe to offer some advice or directions, or to help with a problem in order to win approval and trust.”

  Briscoe exchanged a look with his partner. “We know he’s good at offering advice.”

  “He’s also going to be very interested in any news reports or articles pertaining to the murder he committed. He’ll see it as his murder, his victim. Part of the thrill for him is a certain sense of notoriety, even if he’s the only one who knows to whom the reports are referring. He feeds off of what he sees and hears about the murder. You’ve picked up enough of these guys to know that once you find him and search his place, you’ll probably find newspaper clippings and such dealing with the case.”

  “Anything else?” Briscoe asked. “We need something that’s going to help us make the case against him once we do find him.”

  “Given the precautions he’s taken to cover his tracks, you already know he’s intelligent. It isn’t going to be easy to catch him doing something blatant that you can use against him. If he thinks he’s gotten away with the murder, he could be feeling a little cocky which may make him bolder and more open when approaching young girls. But he’s still going to be cautious. Your garden variety pedophile can get away with biding his time and watching for the right moment to snatch a child. There doesn’t necessarily have to be any preliminary contact between him and his victim. But someone who targets older kids has a tougher job. He doesn’t want to be seen with his victims but he usually has to spend at least a little time establishing some sort of relationship with them in order to get them alone since a teenager isn’t as easy prey as a smaller child. That’s what makes the Internet so attractive to these guys. They can establish a relationship anonymously without coming anywhere near their victim. They’re also experts at reading kids in order to choose a victim because they study and observe the behavior of every child they can. They find something on which to establish a relationship by convincing the child that they have something in common with him or her. So while this man may not target someone he has a personal relationship with as a victim, he wouldn’t be above using any child he comes into contact with to sharpen his skills and keep in practice.”

  “So you don’t think this is a one-shot offense?” Briscoe questioned.

  “If you’re dealing with the same man who was arrested in Des Moines, he’s already given it more than one shot. He just blew the first one. If you don’t catch him, though, I’d say odds are heavy that he’s going to reoffend.”

  “Can you give us any idea how soon he’s going to be looking for his next victim?” Green asked.

  Skoda shrugged. “He’s always looking. But my guess is he’ll wait until the hoopla over this one dies down a bit. If he waited four years in between this one and his last offense, he’ll probably give it a little time before he gets serious about the next one. Reliving what he did to his last victim should hold him for a while. With what little you’ve given me to work with on this particular man, though, it’s hard to predict.” 

  Briscoe nodded. “Thanks, Doc. We’ll keep you in the loop.”

***“He has a police record in Iowa so we were wondering if he showed you a driver’s license from there, or if it was from New York,” Green explained. 

  “Now that you mention it, I think it was from out of state. It was a different color or something. But I don’t remember where it was from. It’s been a while and I was mostly looking at the date – and the picture. Eric is really hot. I can’t believe you think he’s the one. He’s such a nice guy.”

  “We’re not positive he is the one, but we sure would like to find him and have a chat. When was the last time you saw him, Isabel?” Briscoe asked.

  She tapped the counter top thoughtfully. “You know, come to think of it, I don’t believe he’s been here in over a week now.”

  “Did he ever give you any indication about where he lived or worked?”

  “Not that I can think of. He was always kind of quiet. He seemed uncomfortable if I tried to get him to talk for more than a few minutes. I figured he might have a girlfriend or something.”

  Green pulled out a business card and jotted a number on it, then handed it to her. “This is my cell phone number. If you see Fisher anytime or anywhere, day or night, call me right away.”

  “I will,” she promised. “But I still think you’re wrong about him.”

  As they walked from the shop, Briscoe noted, “The reason Fisher didn’t spend time talking to Isabel wasn’t because he had a girlfriend. It was because she was too old for him. He likes them young, before they have enough experience in life to recognize what a predator he is.”

  “Let’s check out the remaining three Eric Fishers on our list. One way or the other, I’d like to find out by the weekend if Fisher is our man.”

  “Oh, he’s the one,” Briscoe assured him. “Old habits die hard. He tried and failed with one girl and succeeded in getting another. All we have to do is find a way to prove it.”

***“Now that we’ve scratched fifty-something Eric Fisher from the list, it has to be either this guy or the next,” Green concluded.

  “Let’s hope so.” Briscoe indicated a building they were approaching. “This is it. We’re looking for unit number 1424.” He looked up and shook his head as Green pulled over to the curb. “This sure is a far cry from Seventh Avenue Eric Fisher’s place with its view of Central Park.”

  After entering the run-down apartment building, they found the elevator to be out of order, blocked with a hastily nailed two-by-four across its frame. Passing a door marked “manager” and continuing toward the back of the building, they were met with the usual sounds of domestic life carrying down the main staircase: crying children, blaring music, and slamming doors. As they proceeded up the scuffed wooden steps, the usual smells of domestic life bombarded them as well.

  Upon reaching the fourth floor, they made their way to a door that had the numbers “14” and “4” tacked onto it, separated by the impression of a missing “2” faded onto the cracked green paint.  

  “Sure is quiet in there,” Green noted after knocking.

  They waited for several seconds, then knocked again.

  “Let’s talk with some of his neighbors,” Briscoe suggested when they received no response.

  Selecting a door with sounds emanating from behind it, they knocked and were greeted seconds later by a woman with a toddler on her hip.

  “Are you here to look at the stove?” she asked before either could speak. “The super said he was going to send someone yesterday. That makes two days now since I’ve been able to make a decent meal for my kids.”

  “No, I’m sorry, we’re not here about the stove,” Green responded, holding out his badge. “We’re police detectives. We wanted to talk to your neighbor, Eric Fisher, but it doesn’t look like he’s home. Do you have any idea when he’ll be back?”

  “He’s at work. He doesn’t get home until later.”

  “Do you know where he works?”

  “Why do you want to know?” she asked suspiciously. “He’s been nice to me and my kids since their dad took off. I don’t want to bring him any trouble.”

  “I can understand that,” Green assured her. “We just need to ask him some questions, Ms. …?”

  “Johnson,” she supplied brusquely. “Eric works at a grocery store somewhere. Sometimes he brings me packages of diapers that got opened a little when they were put on the shelf or cans of food that got dented. He’s been really good to my daughters, too. He always has candy for them and he walks them to the park two blocks over once in a while. Like I said, I don’t want to cause him any trouble.”

  “You have daughters?” Briscoe asked with a smile. “So do I. I’ll bet yours are lovely. How old are they?”

  “One is nine and the other is twelve,” she answered more amiably, seeming to relax somewhat at his off-hand compliment.

  “Cute ages,” Briscoe nodded. “So, what time does Eric usually get home?”

  “I don’t know. He works different shifts. Sometimes he works all night. Last week, my baby was sick and I knocked on his door in the middle of the night and he wasn’t home, so it’s hard to say.”

  “Do you remember what night that was?” Green asked.

  “It was early in the week, on a Monday, I think.” She nodded after reflecting for a second. “Yeah, it was sometime after midnight on Monday, around 3:00 maybe. I had to get another neighbor to watch my girls while I took the baby to the doctor.”

  “By after midnight on Monday, you mean early Tuesday, right?”

  She nodded her agreement. “We went to the County Hospital. The doctor there saw my baby Tuesday morning.”

  Briscoe pulled out a photo and showed it to the woman. “Is this your neighbor?”

  She studied the picture and shook her head. “No, that’s not him. Eric has blond hair and dark brown eyes.”

  He returned the photo to his pocket and said, “Well, it looks like we’ve bothered you for nothing. There’s another man with the same name who has a truckload of unpaid parking tickets. We must’ve gotten the wrong address.”

  “You must have,” she agreed. “The Eric who lives across the hall doesn’t even own a car. He takes the bus to work every day.”

  Shaking his head, Briscoe said, “Boy, do we feel foolish. If you could see your way around mentioning anything to him about our visit, we’d really appreciate it, Ms. Johnson. It would save us some major embarrassment. And you know, since you’ve been so helpful, why don’t we stop by the super’s apartment on the way out and remind him about your stove?”

  “Okay,” she quickly agreed. “My kids are getting tired of sandwiches. Thanks.” 

  When the detectives had started back down the stairs, Green asked, “Is there some reason why you showed her a picture of Allen Jarvis instead of the one of Fisher?”

  “Didn’t you hear her? Her description of him matches our photo. He’s friendly with her daughters. That fits with what Skoda said about our perp. And he wasn’t home on the night of the murder. If my hunch is right and this is our guy, I don’t want a neighbor who thinks he’s a knight in shining armor to give him a heads up before we get to him. We’ll see if the super can identify him off our photo.”

***Green checked his watch as they exited the building. “Depending on the shift he worked today, Fisher could be home any minute or we might have to wait hours before he shows up.”

  “Let’s see how fast we can get a warrant to search his place,” Briscoe suggested, pulling out his cell phone. “I’ll call Serena.”

  “A warrant? With what we have? Or should I say with what we don’t have? We haven’t even spoken to Fisher yet. For all we know, he could’ve been in Timbuktu when Corinna was killed.”

  “I’m not interested in his story and I’m not giving him the chance to lie his way out of an arrest, then destroy whatever evidence might be in his apartment before we get there. And that’s exactly what he’s going to do once he knows we’re on to him. The super positively identified our photo. Fisher has a prior history with a young girl and he was in the coffee shop when the e-mail was sent.” Briscoe shrugged. “It’s not much, but it should be enough for Judge Livingston. He hands out warrants like a meter maid hands out parking violations.” Turning his attention to the phone, he said, “This is Detective Briscoe from the 27th precinct. I need to speak with Serena Southerlyn.”

  The receptionist at One Hogan Place answered into his ear, “I’m sorry, Ms. Southerlyn is in court. Can someone else help you?”

  “No, thanks. Can you have her call me at this number a.s.a.p.?”

  “I’ll give her the message, Detective.”

  “Thanks.” Briscoe began dialing again. “She’s in court. I’ll try her cell phone.” After doing so, he had to resign himself to leaving another message.

  They had barely gotten back into the car when Green pointed to a figure coming from the building they had just left. “Isn’t that Fisher?”

  Briscoe squinted and swore. “We barely missed him. He must have gone in while we were talking to the super. I sure wish we knew our warrant was on the way.”

  “You could call Hogan Place back and ask for another A.D.A.”

  “Another A.D.A. might ask too many questions.”

  Green smiled wryly. “You mean an A.D.A. with more experience would want to know what you had been smoking to ask for a warrant without probable cause?”

  “In our business, we go with what we’ve got. Serena will get us our warrant,” Briscoe stated confidently. “We’ll just have to keep Fisher under surveillance until we hear from her.”

  Green started the car after the man had reached the corner and began to slowly follow. Upon turning onto the next street, they spotted him waiting a few yards away at a bus stop.

  “Great,” Briscoe complained as Green drove past the small group of waiting people and pulled over to the curb several car lengths ahead. “I hate tailing buses.” Rolling down the window, he adjusted the side mirror in order to keep Fisher within view.

  “Look on the bright side. He could’ve taken the subway,” Green observed.

  After the bus arrived and they watched Fisher climb aboard, they followed at a discreet distance, pulling over and waiting at each of the buses’ pick-up points. When they had followed for more than an hour and through two bus transfers, they spotted Fisher disembarking.

  Briscoe nodded as Green parked the car. “The New York Public Library – that was a good place to meet girls, even in my day.”

  They left the car and entered the building, splitting up to unobtrusively keep tabs on their suspect. After following him through the labyrinth of sections and waiting while he accessed the Internet using a library computer, they eventually wound up in the student research area. Fisher selected a book and settled at a table while Green searched a bookshelf behind him. Briscoe picked up a discarded newspaper and sat down several feet away under the pretense of reading. Glancing over the top of the newspaper, he noted that three teenage girls were huddled over what appeared to be homework at the table next to Fisher’s.

  After spending several minutes flipping through a book, Fisher got up to return it to the shelf. As he brought back another selection, he smiled at the girls when he passed, then sat in a chair nearer to their table. Moments later, when two of girls got up and left the third alone, Fisher leaned toward her and spoke quietly. The girl smiled and handed him a pencil. Fisher jotted something on a scrap of paper, then gave the pencil back and struck up a subdued conversation with her. Briscoe’s eyes fixed unwaveringly on him while he chatted with the girl until her companions returned. The teenagers remained for only a few minutes more before packing their belongings into backpacks and leaving. No more than five minutes after they had done so, Fisher got up and also headed for the exit, followed again by the detectives.

  Once they made it back to the car undetected, they kept a watchful eye on Fisher while he waited for the bus.

  Briscoe pulled out his phone. “We need that warrant, now. I’m going to try Serena again.” After several seconds, he queried into the phone, “Serena? It’s Lennie Briscoe.”

  “I just got your message and was about to call you, Detective. What can I do for you?” Southerlyn asked.

  “Do you remember reading in the papers about Corinna Braden, the fifteen year old who was found floating in the Hudson first of last week? Ed and I are tailing a guy named Eric Fisher who looks really good for the murder and we need a warrant to search his place for evidence.”

  “What do you have for me to take to a judge?”

  “We’ve established that the Braden girl was having e-mail conversations with someone she was on her way to meet on the night she was killed. Most of the messages she received were sent from computers located in four different coffee shops. Surveillance tapes show that Fisher was one of four regulars in one of the shops at the exact time the victim received a message from there. We’ve eliminated two of the other regulars because they have air-tight alibis, but Fisher’s neighbor said he wasn’t home around the time of the murder. We’re sure he’s is our man.”

  “His being at the coffee shop, especially with others present, isn’t much to go on,” she hedged. “And just because he wasn’t home doesn’t mean he was out killing the victim.”

  Picking up on her hesitancy, he quickly added, “He also has a previous arrest in Iowa for abducting a fourteen year old girl and he’s been spending an unusual amount of time with his neighbor’s little girls. We talked to Skoda about this. Fisher fits the profile to a tee.”

  “What kind of alibi did he offer for the murder? Can you put him with the girl at any time on the night she was killed?”

  “We haven’t questioned him yet,” he admitted. “We want to have the search warrant in hand before we do that. There was no forensic evidence left on the body so we don’t want to take a chance on him destroying anything in his apartment that might tie him to the girl, like her clothes or belongings. If we get the warrant first, we can always tear it up if we’re convinced he’s not our guy after interrogating him.”

  “Your evidence is all circumstantial. If that’s all you have…”

  Trying to hide his annoyance, he said as persuasively as he could, “Look, we get warrants on less than this all the time. Getting one before we question a suspect is sort of an insurance policy when we’re reasonably sure we have the right person. It’s something to hold over his head when we do sit down with him.”

  “The evidence to base a warrant on is thin. And I don’t think I can talk a judge into giving you one just so you have something to hold over a suspect’s head,” Southerlyn argued.

  “Judge Livingston will.”

  “Judge Livingston?”

  “Yeah, we’ve worked with him before. He knows us. Hey, all we’re asking is that you try.”

  Southerlyn contemplated a moment, then sighed into the phone. “All right. I’ll see what I can do. I’m still at the court building so I’ll try to catch Judge Livingston in his chambers. I’ll let you know what I come up with.”

  Briscoe returned his phone to his pocket as Fisher boarded a bus. “She’s already at the court building so we should know something on the warrant soon.”

  “You made it sound like Fisher has a record. Don’t you think you should’ve told her that he walked away from the incident with the girl in Des Moines?” Green reminded him.

  “Oh, did he? I guess I forgot. At my age, those little details sometimes slip my mind.”

  Green glanced over to find Briscoe’s face the picture of innocence. Shaking his head, he noted, “I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Partner.”

  As they followed Fisher back across town, it eventually became apparent that he was returning to his apartment without taking any other excursions along the way. Just before reaching the stop near where they had started, Briscoe’s cell phone chimed.

  “Judge Livingston is in Part 23, which is still in session,” Southerlyn explained when he answered. “If you need the warrant right away, I’ll have to approach another judge with the request.”

  “Another judge may not be familiar with our work. It has to be Livingston,” he insisted.

  “Then you’ll have to wait. I’ll try to corner him during the next recess. I’ll call you back as soon as I have something.”

  Briscoe relayed the information to Green, who asked, “Any suggestions as to how we can buy ourselves some time until the warrant does arrive?”

  “We could stop the bus and claim we received a tip that there’s a shoe bomber aboard. We can hold everyone while we examine their feet. Gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘foot patrol’,” Briscoe suggested dryly.

  “That’s not funny,” Green admonished. “We’ll just have to take him at his place when the warrant does get to us.”

  When Fisher disembarked around the corner from his apartment, Green pulled ahead and stopped across the street from the building. Fisher continued to approach the entrance, then casually glanced in their direction. He did a double take upon spotting their car and stopped short, studying them suspiciously.

  “Uh oh,” Green declared, trying to appear uninterested as he scrunched down slightly. He swore as Fisher began walking rapidly toward the front door, all the while glancing toward their car. “I think he’s made us.”

  With a determined glint in his eyes, Briscoe threw open the car door. “Come on. We can’t let him get into his apartment. Let’s go get the bastard.” 

 

Chapter 10